[filmgirlcw]

That was true until the cable companies themselves bought networks. Comcast owning NBC Universal, the various cable associations with the artists formerly known as Time Warner, the various local station and sports station roll ups for the various providers, all make them entwined.

And the networks were already offering online access to their content via TV Everywhere. They didn’t want to do the geolocation thing, that was all requirements of the cable companies (the issues with the network broadcasters like ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox are much more complex).

In fact, you could (and I would) argue that it was the cable companies insistence on maintaining their defacto monopolies on who could get what service where (because there was never consumer choice in who your cable provider is, unless you count satellite, which I do not) that pushed the networks hands into creating their own competing OTT services based on the content they owned. Because as people cut the cord, the networks weren’t going to watch their businesses completely go up in flames. Now, should they have done that sooner and more aggressively (HBO did it best and earliest with HBO Now as a companion to HBO Go — a move that earned them the ire of the cable industry, the same industry who often refused to let HBO Go subscribers who paid the cable companies directly for HBO, do things like access the service on an Xbox b.c they didn’t like the idea of people not paying a $5 a month fee for an extra box), yes. 1000%

But let’s not pretend like the cable companies were without leverage. If they’d acted decisively and disrupted themselves early enough, they were the ones with the direct relationship with the customer, not the networks. They were the ones who could have created their own bundles of OTT content. But no, they refused until it was too late and got to see the whole industry bleed itself and for live content to essentially die.